A common sentiment I see here regarding bets that would leave behind small effective stacks is that the only possible responses are "shove or fold". The idea behind this seems to be that since you'll be pot committed so frequently on the next street, you may as well get your stack in now.

This is wrong, which I will show in an example. The reason is that the situation is symmetrical: your opponent will also be frequently pot committed.

Consider a scenario that seems at first glance to be an obvious "shove or fold". You are sitting in the big blind, 4 big blinds deep and your opponent raises to 3 big blinds. You know that he is doing this with the Nash shoving range at 4BB - {22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,93s+,84s+,74s+,64s+, 53s+,A2o+,K2o+,Q2o+,J2o+,T5o+,96o+,86o+,76o} - he anticipates you to play "shove or fold" and is doing this just to be annoying, figuring the results will be the same anyway. Should you flat call any hands? After all, you will only have 1BB behind in a 6BB pot. If you think of calling as only a question of "implied odds" where you need a deep stack behind to call, you'll probably think "no".

However, the answer is yes. Consider the Nash calling range for 4BB (interestingly enough, the exact same range for Nash shoving). A number of small suited connectors such as 54s are calls. Therefore, if you called the 3BB raise and got all-in on every flop, it would be +EV and equivalent to if you had shoved.

But what if you were able to fold some of the time? If the flop came really bad, say JT9 while you had 54, you would only have 10.2% equity against his range and thus would be better off check/folding. Every other board you would open shove on, giving you the same result as if you had shoved preflop but with small EV gains on some boards.

Couldn't your opponent gain from folding too? Not necessarily. Suppose your flatting range was {Q4s,Q2s,J3s-J2s,93s+,84s+,74s+,64s+,53s+}. Even on the best board for your range versus the worst hand in your opponent's range (T87 against your opponent's 53), he still has 12.769% equity, more than the 12.5% equity he needs to call. Thus, your opponent can never profitably fold. Since you can make some profitable folds, having this flatting range dominates shove or folding.

Now this example was constructed specifically to illustrate the point clearly, but your opponent never folding is not a necessary condition for some flatting to be good. So long as your hand gains more from the ability to fold than your opponent's range does, flatting is more profitable than shoving. Since you can construct a flatting range which disproportionately consists of hands that gain from being able to fold, but can just shove if your opponent tries to construct such a raising range, I believe that in almost any situation having a flatting range is at least as good as shove or folding. And this is assuming that your opponent will play correctly post flop - you can gain even more if he does not.

Interesting theory, could be applied to super turbos in particular but I'm not sure there will be enough situations in regular or turbo structure to implement this strategy.

Unless opponent raises huge at the 50/100 level say; 1000 effective, raises 7X. Have you considered how it applies to bigger Nash ranges?

Good post all the same.

Could some math dude confirm or deny this?

I used the example of a very small stack pot ratio postflop because it highlights the concept so well. I think it applies just as well to deeper stacks, however it's much harder to prove. There are many spots where I think people tend to shove or fold because they can't be bothered playing another street.

Really interesting idea, altho I think you'd gain more from weird FE in spots like shoving facing a 3x open w 6bb stax

nice post, don't think there are a lot of situations you can exploit this, the gain is very small and the math to complex to do in a few seconds.

so I don't see a practical use for it, but still nice post!

For me, it's partially about the sheer difficulty of fine tuning ranges and parts of ranges in these very low SPR situations (6 BB pot, 1 BB stack) such that I'm outplaying villain by precisely mucking certain hands on specific board textures while 70%+ of my stack is in the middle. But it's definitely something to at least explore on paper and flesh out a little across a variety of recurring spots.

You don't have to be precise to be profitable, especially as your opponent likely isn't being precise either. If your opponent is folding 0% of the time on the next street while you're folding any strictly positive amount of the time, flatting is better than shove or folding.

I understand your point but I don't see how practical this can be.

The obvious flaw is going to be to decide what a really bad flop is! for instance on the JT9 flop we will be folding our 54!? (if I understand you properly) and making a mistake vs 53. And this is the worst hand in the range! if we had even slightly better for instance 64 straight away we are making mistakes by folding against more hands (73s, 85s.....)

Also your exemple is very clear cut but what do we do on A92r with our 54??? is this a good or a bad flop? (answer: it's a good flop we have ~32.5% equity vs his range and we only need ~12%) but very hard to tell "in game" ! Even assuming that our opponent 1. play perfectly nash and 2. that we know it . BTW, when does that ever happen? (especially at a time when more and more people advocate going away from playing straightforward Nash strategy)

Also after "correctly" folding our 54 on the JT9we now have to double up twice just to go back to our 4BB !

I am not sure that the tiny EV we gain can make up for all the disadvantages and imprecisions of your technique. I would gladly be persuaded but for the moment I am very sceptical

lol calling a 3BB raise with 4BB left to see a flop is just ******ed.

there is no discussion.

for the sake of it: with 45s you are about 40% vs the range you mentioned.

You are not only getting perfect Potodds to jam (4 into a 10BB pot).

But you can also not maximize your EV by just calling and then check fold. You will flop a pair only 33% of the time afaik, your opponent will NEVER fold for 1BB in a 9BB Pot (lolol) so you have NO foldequity. If you only "jam" with a pair, your preflop equity decreases to 33% multiplied with whatever equity a flopped pair of 4s and/or 5s and two randomcards vs his range has. Also you will ofc jam all draws, but they have only 30-40% equity for turn and river, NO fold equity.

This is quite as ******ed as flatting KK to see if an ace hits the flop and probably even more.


EDIT: lol I just read over again and am amazed how serious you are.

This means, everytime we are ahead we give our opponent better than perfect odds to call. I mean, how can you use this as an argument to be +EV. You are saying, that our opponent will make a profitable Call even in our best case scenario!

We probably can make a profitable fold on the flop, but we will have to fold flop WAY too often to make calling pre more +EV than jamming.

Also I expect theory on how to slowplay your hand when you hit to balance your checking range...

I don't care what anyone says, calling a 3bb bet with 1bb behind with the intention of check/folding some flops is stupid :P

It sounds like something Phil Hellmuth would do

Nice post Nichlemn. This concept comes up a lot in 'go n go' situations which people play super terribly imo especially in loldonkaments.

I just reread his post and either I don't get it and neither does the OP or you don't get it.

In a tourney could you argue that last 1bb you save has a disproportionate cash value, particularly around the bubble, so that avoiding busto in this siuation is a great result from this play? Sort of chip and a chair situation.

Technically we should expect no FE for jamming 4bb over 3bb apart from the occasional misclick, so there is no real argument for choosing 3bet shoving over stop and go. However tbh the amount of flops where we aren't really priced in isn't that minuscule at all:


http://propokertools.com/simulations...5s-54s,64s-53s

I'm not saying that this strategy dominates against every single hand in your opponent's range. It does, however, dominate against your opponent's range on every single board.

It's not hard to tell in this situation: every single board that isn't high super coordinated cards is worth stacking off in. With someone deeper stacks it might be harder to calculate, sure, but remember your opponent will also have a tough time playing perfectly, and if you're doing this you should be better at it than he is.

The playing of Nash is not a necessary condition for this to work. It's simply to show that even if your opponent otherwise plays perfectly, flatting is still good. If your opponent deviates from Nash, you'll probably do the same or better.

So? 1BB is better than none.

The extra EV is certainly very tiny on this particular spot. However I'm not so much trying to convince you to flat in these rare situations, but by first proving that flatting is good even in the unlikeliest situation, that you should consider flatting in many others.

You're not trying to get fold equity. Indeed, in this scenario your opponent never folds any hand on any board. You also seem to think that you give up on most boards. You don't. You open shove every board in which you would have correct odds to call a shove with, which is most of them. You check/fold the rest. In the former scenario, the result is exactly the same as if you shoved preflop - you get all-in. In the latter scenario, you are able to save your last big blind from an unprofitable situation.

i think against a lot of opponents open jamming 100% of flops will be better than check/folding occasionally

either way i like your post, haven't seen your name around in a while but i remember you used to write some pretty good theory

cool thread, imo the tiny tiny tiny edge of this thing dosnt worth the price of being at least 29bb to 1bb (50/100 level) the next hand tought. as other said, might be more relevant in mtt or 1 table sng where ICM can show us an absolute profit

lol sayinig there is no discussion when you aren't capable of understanding a post is just ******ed.

there is no discussion.

yes you are right. Silly of me you are playing against the range and not a particular hand.



There, I am still not so sure that evaluating when you should check/fold is going to be all that obvious



like your previous answer I am not sure how anyone is going to be able to evaluate correctly villain's range 4BB deep


Once again you are correct and I am wrong. The upside is the same but the downside is now 1BB instead of 0 wich is obv better!

got you. I guess I just need to get my head around how to use your technique in a less extreme example than the one you provided to see the real advantage of it.

interesting post

Pot odds to jam makes no sense. For you to be able to profitably jam (say it's the river) you need to be 50%+ against villain's calling range. Most people just assume that since we'll have so much equity on most boards we should just shove now. OP clearly disagrees and has used math to show why.

I don't play tourneys so don't get into these spots too often but have gotten into these spots sometimes say you have combo draw with ~40% against his range and no FE at all after ch/r a flop and you got 3-bet to an amount where villain is never folding and you would have had odds to call a shove. The problem is in that spot I'm never folding any turn so I usually just ship but in the case of the OP seems super-valid.

I apologize for being a bit rude in my first reply in this thread. I was slightly drunk yesterday. Also some of my math was wrong (I some calculated myself into 5BB stacks instead of 4BB stacks).


It´s not the river, it´s pre. Villain 3xes. There is 4BB in the Pot, we have 3BB behind, Villain has 1BB behind. If we jam for 3BB instead of calling for 2BB, we always get a call. So technically, there is 5BB in the pot, we put in 3BB to win 8BB. We get 37.5% Call equity with ~40% Win equity.
You don´t always need 50% at least to be profitably jamming. There is always money in the pot to be won, in this case blinds.

Now I´m still not convinced that flatting is the nuts pre.

Because of that I simulated the whole 54s scenario with Pokerazor. Here is the result:

Indeed we will flop a pair, draw (gutshots included) 51.03% of the time. We can jam then and always get a call. Our EV of jamming is 4,75175BB, thus +EV. However globally, we check post the other 48.97% of the time and will always loose then. This makes our preflop call less +EV then it seems, as we loose 1.1142BB on every flop (net win/loss of preflop and post investments combined), but we win only 0.2213BB by jamming (net win/loss of preflop and post investments + money we win multiplied with equity combined).

So there you go. The EV of OPs strategy is -0.893BB. So we loose that from our initial 4BB stack. (it´s obv better than folding as that would mean a "loss" of 1BB).

By jamming pre (assuming we get a call 100% of the time) with our equity vs villains range (s. a.) we loose 0.651BB of our initial 4 BB stack. This is better than folding and also better than OPs suggested strategy.


Still I believe that this whole thread is one sick level. So I´m outta here.

Mr.G doesn't get it, we don't fold every time we miss we just fold times where we wouldnt be getting correct odds to call if some how we ended up in a situation where we were getting the same price. Shoving is equivalent to calling a shove in this spot as villain will call with 100% of his range.

OP wasn't trying to say that we should always flat when people raise 75% of our stack, he was simply using a contrived example with easy math to show that spot where we would automatically assume is shove or fold actually can be made slightly more profitable by calling and then playing the next street.

Good post OP.

Coolest post I've read in a while in HUNL. Such a seemingly trivial concept but poker's about dissecting EVERYTHING.